"Those" People


Thanks to Tbogg for the original image...you might want to check this post.

That and something at Hullabaloo entitled There But For the Grace of God (scroll down if it's not the latest) caught my eye, because I've been thinking about some similar things over the last couple of days, particularly in light of the almost gleeful wrath expressed by some as to the plight of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans...a mix and match of "they deserve it for living there" and, especially in the case of NOLA, the not-so-veiled racism of "just a bunch of welfare cheats and chiselers" who've used the storm as yet another excuse to beg for public assistance.

Hmm...maybe it's just me, but I'd bet the poor, unfortunate soul pictured above didn't exactly take advantage of "the system," as is the case with some 1500 or more others. And I'd also bet that few New Orleanians, if any, wouldn't jump (and jump awfully high, if need be) at the chance to get back to the proverbial "status quo ante" of life before August 29, 2005.

Oh, and contrary to the oft spewed-forth wingnut myth that New Orleans was/is full of dusky, savagely-hedonistic-welfare receipients who take your tax dollars and use them to buy guns, bullets, and crack cocaine...well, after plowing through dozens of wingnut sites that proffer their rhetoric with ZERO documentation, I fnally managed to come across this (oh, and judging from the masthead, it's not exactly a bleeding heart publication...not with Victor Davis Hanson, Bill Bennett, and Peggy Noonan occupying various slots in the structure:

New Orleans does not have a stratospherically high government-dependency rate. In 2002, it had 6,696 families on cash welfare, or 3.6 percent...In 2000, 7.8 percent of New Orleans households received Supplemental Security Income...

Not that I expect wingnuts to ever let facts get in the way of their myths.

People who live in this region, contrary to those tightly clung-to myths, aren't asking for anything special...in particular, New Orleanians are merely asking the government to make good on the liability THEY'VE ACKNOWLEDGED...which is only fair, considering that, one, it IS a matter of criminal liability, and two, that both New Orleans, and the United States Gulf Coast have been net assets to the country since their incorporation.


And, finally, it's particularly galling to consider that the government is more than willing to throw away money hand over fist for the fool's errand that is Iraq...the latest "pragmatic" argument that wingnuttia offers is, when boiled down, horrifically expensive procrastination, putting off the final, awful reckoning even further...while ignoring the chance to both do something positive AND gain some experience in nation building by opting for a surge right here, where it'd actually be appreciated.

But, with the fools in power we've got...[bang head on keyboard]